Sweets in the USSR were one of the main delicacies that Soviet children could afford. They were presented for the holidays, they were treated on birthdays, on weekends, parents spoiled their kids with delicious sweets, which were not always easy to get. Of course, the variety of sweets was not as great as it is now, but the most famous and successful brands have survived to this day and are still popular. Let's talk about some of them.

How did chocolate appear in the USSR?

The main value was considered to be chocolate sweets in the USSR. It is interesting that the first chocolate bar in the world appeared only in 1899 in Switzerland, and chocolate began to be imported to Russia only in the middle of the 19th century. A German from Württemberg opened a workshop on the Arbat, in which chocolates were also produced.

In 1867, von Einem and a partner opened a factory, which was one of the first in the country to start a steam engine, which allowed the company to become one of the largest confectionery products in the country.

After the October Revolution, all factories passed into the hands of the state, and in 1918 a decree was issued on the nationalization of the entire confectionery industry. Thus, the Abrikosovs 'factory was named after the worker Babaev, the Einem firm was renamed Red October, and the Lenov merchants' factory Rot Front. It was only under the new government that problems arose with the production of chocolate, for its production cocoa beans were needed, and with this serious difficulties arose.

The so-called "sugar" regions of the country for a long time still remained under the control of the "whites", and gold and currency, for which raw materials could be purchased abroad, were used to purchase more basic bread. Only in the mid-1920s, the confectionery production was restored, the entrepreneurial vein of the Nepmen played a role in this, but with the launch of the planned economy, the production of sweets in the USSR became strictly regulated. Each factory was transferred to a separate type of product. For example, chocolate was produced at Krasny Oktyabr, and caramel at the Babaev factory. What kind of sweets were in the USSR, you will learn from this article.

The work of confectionery factories did not stop during the Great Patriotic War, because it was a strategically important product, the set of "emergency stock" necessarily included a bar of chocolate, which saved more than one pilot or sailor from death.

After the war, a lot of equipment turned out to be in the USSR, exported from German confectionery enterprises. At the Babaev factory, the output of chocolate was increased several times, if in 1946 they processed 500 tons of cocoa beans a year, then by the end of the 60s it was already 9,000 tons. This was favored by foreign policy supported by the leaders of many African powers, from where this raw material was supplied in large quantities.

At that time, the production of sweets in the USSR was stable and there was no shortage, at least in large cities, there were only pre-holiday days. Before each New Year, all the children were given sweet sets, which caused most of the candies to disappear from the shelves.

"Squirrel"

Belochka sweets were very popular and loved among Soviet kids and their parents. Their main distinguishing feature was the finely crushed hazelnuts, which were contained in the filling. The candy was easy to recognize by the label, it showed a squirrel with a nut in its paws, which referred us to the famous work of Pushkin "The Tale of Tsar Saltan".

For the first time, Belochka sweets began to be produced in the early 1940s at the confectionery factory named after Nadezhda Krupskaya. At that time she was part of the Leningrad production association of the confectionery industry. In Soviet times, these sweets deservedly became one of the most popular in the country, several thousand tons of them were produced annually.

"Kara-kum"

In the USSR, it was originally produced at a confectionery factory in Taganrog. They conquered the sweet tooth with a nut praline filling with the addition of crushed waffles and cocoa.

Over time, they began to be produced at other enterprises, in particular, at "Red October", in the confectionery group "United Confectioners".

Sweets owe their name to the desert on the territory of modern Kazakhstan, which in those years was part of the Soviet Union. Thus, the producers of sweets took care not only of the pleasure of their consumers, but also of increasing their knowledge of geography.

Ballet Glier

Candy was named not only in honor of geographical objects, but also ... ballets. At least according to the most widespread version, the Red Poppy candy owes its name to Glier's ballet of the same name, which was first staged at the Bolshoi Theater in 1926.

The story of this premiere is amazing. Initially, they were supposed to stage a new ballet called "The Daughter of the Port", but theater officials found the libretto not very interesting and dynamic. Then the plot was revived, and the musical arrangement was altered, so the ballet "Red Poppy" appeared, which gave the name to the popular Soviet sweets.

The storyline of the new work really turned out to be rich and exciting. Here are the insidious head of the port of Hips, and the young Chinese woman Tao Hoa, in love with the captain of a Soviet ship, and brave sailors. A conflict unfolds between the bourgeois and the Bolsheviks, they are trying to poison the captain of the ship, and in the finale the brave Chinese woman dies. Waking up before his death, Tao passes on to those around a poppy flower, which was once given to her by a Soviet captain. This beautiful romantic story has been immortalized in the art of confectionery so that candy is still popular today.

The delicacy was distinguished by a praline filling, to which vanilla flavors, candy crumbs and hazelnuts were added. The sweets themselves were glazed with chocolate.

"Montpensier"

Not only chocolates were appreciated in the USSR. Anyone who remembers the counters of Soviet stores can tell you about the candies in the Monpassier iron can. In the USSR, these were the most popular candies.

They were shaped like small tablets and had different fruit flavors. These were real candies made from caramelized sugar. They had a large number of flavors and colors, some, for example, purposefully bought only orange, lemon or berry candies. But the most popular was still the classic assortment, when you could taste candies of all sorts and tastes at a time.

These sweets were originally produced at the Krupskaya factory. They had a nutty filling that was wrapped in a waffle body.

Confectioners set up their production shortly before the start of the Great Patriotic War, in 1939. "Bear in the North" was so fond of the inhabitants of Leningrad that even during the blockade, despite all the difficulties and difficulties of wartime, the factory continued to produce this delicacy. For example, in 1943, 4.4 tons of these sweets were produced. For many besieged Leningraders, they became one of the symbols of the inviolability of their spirit, an important element that helped to hold out and survive when it seemed that everything was lost, the city was doomed, and all its inhabitants were threatened with starvation.

The original design of the wrapper, by which today everyone can easily recognize these sweets, was developed by the artist Tatyana Lukyanova. Album sketches that she performed at the Leningrad Zoo formed the basis for the creation of this image.

It is interesting that now this brand belongs to the Norwegian confectionery concern, which bought out the Krupskaya factory. In modern Russia, until 2008, sweets under this name were produced at different enterprises, but after the amendments to the law on trademarks came into force, most factories were forced to abandon the production of sweets under the original name and design. Therefore, today on the shelves of stores you can find analogues that differ somewhat in the pattern on the label or name, but at the same time they are still easy to recognize.

"Creamy toffee"

In the USSR, "Creamy Toffee" sweets were produced at the Krasny Oktyabr factory. Their production has been established since 1925, along with other sweets, which are still considered the Golden Fund of the factory. First of all, these are cocoa and chocolate "Golden Label", "Bear Footed" (not to be confused with "Bear in the North"), iris "Kis-kis".

"Creamy toffee" belonged to Those who remember it from Soviet times say that it was a very tasty candy, small in size and yellowish-white in a greenish-yellow wrapper interspersed with pink. But its release has long been discontinued for an unknown reason.

"Meteorite"

They were also very popular in the USSR. They were produced only in the second half of the XX century, now they, like "Creamy Toffee", cannot be found. They are closest to the taste of modern Grilyazh sweets.

They were produced at several factories at once - "Red October", "Amta" in Ulan-Ude, "Bucuria" in Chisinau.

At the same time, “Meteorite” was, in fact, very different from “Grillage”, as it was lighter and more delicate. He was surrounded by a thin shell of chocolate, which literally melted in his mouth, beneath it was a nut-caramel-honey filling, which had a taste of shortbread cookies and honey. The sweets were very satisfying, and the filling itself bite off very easily, this was their main difference from the "Grill".

In appearance, Soviet sweets "Meteorite" resembled small chocolate balls. When they were cut with a knife, a complex filling of seeds or nuts with honey caramel was exposed. The candies were wrapped in a characteristic blue wrapper, the color of the night sky. Usually they were sold in small cardboard boxes, but it was possible to find these candies by weight.

"Iris"

One of the most popular non-chocolates in the USSR is Iris. In fact, this is a fondant mass, which was formed by boiling condensed milk with molasses, sugar and fat, and both vegetable or butter and margarine were used. Crushed in the Soviet Union, it was sold in the form of sweets, which were in great demand.

The name of the candy owes its name to a French pastry chef by the name of either Morne, or Mornas, which can no longer be reliably established, who worked at a factory in St. Petersburg at the very beginning of the 20th century. It was he who first noticed that their relief is very similar to the petals of an iris flower.

In the USSR, several varieties of this candy were produced: they were often covered with glaze, and sometimes the filling was added. By the method of production, they were distinguished between replicated and cast iris, and by consistency and structure they were distinguished:

• soft;
• semi-solid;
• replicated;
• cast semi-solid (classic example - "Golden Key");
• stringy ("Tuzik", "Kis-kis").

In the USSR, the most popular were the so-called toffee - small candies that were sold in a wrapper. Their manufacturing process consisted of sequentially adding and heating ingredients in a digester to the final temperature while the mixture was still liquid. It was cooled on a special table with a water jacket. When the mixture became non-viscous and thick, it was placed in a special apparatus, from which a bundle of iris mass of a specific thickness came out. Such a tourniquet was sent directly to an iris wrapping machine, in which it was cut into small candies and wrapped in a label.

After that, the finished products were cooled in specially designed tunnels, dried (at this time, crystallization took place), due to this, the required consistency was achieved. In its shape, iris could be square, in the form of bricks, or molded.

They enjoyed special love and popularity in the USSR. Interestingly, these candies are originally from Poland, where they appeared in 1936. Their recipe remains unchanged to this day. Traditional "Bird's Milk" sweets are made in dessert chocolate with vanilla filling.

In 1967, the minister of the Soviet food industry Vasily Zotov in Czechoslovakia was conquered by these delicious sweets. Returning to the Soviet Union, he gathered representatives from all confectionery factories, giving the task to make the same sweets without a prescription, but using only a sample.

In the same year, the production of these sweets was launched by a confectionery factory in Vladivostok. The recipe, which was developed in Vladivostok, was eventually recognized as the best in the USSR; today these sweets are sold under the Primorskie brand. Their feature was the use of agar-agar.

In 1968, experimental batches of these sweets appeared at the Rot Front factory, but the recipe documentation was never approved. Only over time, production was able to be established throughout the country. At that time, the shelf life of real "Bird's milk" sweets, prepared according to the classic recipe, was only 15 days. Only in the 90s they began to increase it, and at the same time reduce the cost of ingredients, making sweets more affordable. Preservatives were widely used, which increased their shelf life to two months.

The special pride of domestic chefs was a cake called "Bird's Milk", which was invented and invented in the Soviet Union. It happened in 1978 in the confectionery shop of the capital's restaurant "Prague". Pastry chef Vladimir Guralnik led the process, and according to other sources, he personally created the cake.

It was made from muffin dough, for the interlayer they used a cream based on butter, sugar-agar syrup, condensed milk and egg whites, which were pre-beaten. In 1982, the Bird's Milk cake became the first cake in the USSR for which a patent was issued. For its production, a workshop was specially equipped, which produced two thousand cakes a day, but that still remained in short supply.

Sweets: from candy to cookies

The main producers of sweets in the USSR were the factories "Red October", "Rot Front", "Babaevskaya" and "Bolshevik", which were located in the capital of the Soviet Union - Moscow. It was they who set the tone for the rest of the factories, both in quality and in the design of sweet products.

Krasny Oktyabr is a former confectionery factory called Einem (it was named after its founder, the German Ferdinand von Einem). After the October Revolution of 1917, the factory was nationalized and renamed. And she continued her “sweet” history in new, socialist conditions, producing mainly chocolate and sweets. Among the latter there were: "Clubfoot Bear" (appeared in 1925), "Southern Night" (1927), "Creamy Fudge" (1928), iris "Kis-kis" (1928), "Stratosphere" (1936), "Souffle "(1936) and others.

In 1935 A. Ptushko's film "New Gulliver" was released, which was a huge success among children. After that, Gulliver sweets - waffles covered with real chocolate glaze - appeared on the shelves of Soviet stores. These were expensive sweets, so when they became popular, their cheap counterpart appeared - the Zhuravlik sweets, where the same waffle was covered with soy chocolate. The price is more affordable - 20 kopecks apiece.

Among the chocolate products of "Red October", the "oldest" brand was the "Golden Label" (1926). But Gvardeisky chocolate appeared during the war years. In those years, "Krasny Oktyabr" produced exclusively chocolate, and one brand - "Cola" - was intended for pilots. And after the war, the production of sweets was again resumed.

Since the second half of the 60s, the most recognizable product of Krasny Oktyabr has become the Alenka chocolate (1 ruble 10 kopecks for a large bar and 20 kopecks for a small 15-gram slab). And it arose under Brezhnev, although the idea was born when N. Khrushchev was the leader of the country. At the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in February 1964, an appeal was made to Soviet confectioners to come up with cheap chocolate for the kids. This idea was put into practice at the Krasny Oktyabr confectionery factory for two years, until, finally, the Alenka milk chocolate saw the light of day. The label showed a little girl wearing a headscarf. This portrait was found on the cover of the magazine "Health" in 1962: there was photographed 8-month-old Lenochka Gerinas (the photo was taken by her father Alexander).

Other products of this factory included chocolate - "Tales of Pushkin", "Flotskiy", "Slava" and others; sweets - "Cancer necks", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Kara-kum", "Truffles", "Deer", "Souffle", "Tretyakov Gallery", "Temptation", "Fairy Tale", "Come on, take it away" , "Snowball", "Peace", "Little Humpbacked Horse", "Zest", "Evening", "Chernomorochka", "Ladybug", iris "Golden Key", etc.

The main competitor of "Red October" was considered the confectionery factory named after P. Babaev ("Babaevskaya"). Before the revolution, it was an enterprise of the merchants Abrikosovs, but after nationalization in 1918, the prominent Bolshevik Pyotr Babaev became its leader. True, he did not manage for long - only two years (he died at the age of 37 from tuberculosis), but his name was immortalized in the new name of the factory.

Before the war, she specialized in the production of monpensier, toffee and caramel. And immediately after the war, it began to produce chocolate products, and very soon it was chocolate that became the main brand of this factory. Among its most popular brands of chocolate were "Inspiration" (elite chocolate), "Babaevsky", "Special", "Gvardeisky", "Lux".

Among the sweets were listed such as "Squirrel", "Bear in the North", "Shuttle", "Zolotaya Niva", "Orange flavor", "Pilot", "Vesna", "Burevestnik", "Morskie", "Romashka", "Truffles", etc.;, in boxes - "Squirrel", "Visit", "Evening aroma", "Sweet dreams", etc.

Rot Front produced sweets of the following brands: Moscow, Kremlin, Rot Front (bars), Krasnaya Riding Hood, Chocolate Covered Grill, Zolotaya Niva, Karavan, Autumn Waltz, "Lemon" (caramel), "Peanuts in chocolate", "Raisins in chocolate", etc.

The Bolshevik factory was popular for its oatmeal and Jubilee cookies. However, we will talk about cookies below.

In Leningrad, there was a confectionery factory named after N.K. Krupskaya, which was opened in 1938. For a long time, her trademark (or brand in today's world) was the Mishka in the North sweets, which appeared on the shelves of Soviet stores before the war - in 1939. This factory produced both chocolate and sweets, among which the Firebird sweets (praline and cream) were very popular.

In general, sweets in the USSR were divided into cheap and expensive. The former included various kinds of caramels, the latter - chocolate products. The overwhelming majority of Soviet children most often indulged in "caramels", and various kinds of chocolate "snacks" passed through her hands a little less often due to their relative high cost. Naturally, chocolate sweets have always been appreciated in the children's environment much higher than caramel ones. And whenever possible they were consumed with enviable regularity, for which almost every child knew how to "beg" money from their parents for chocolate "snacks".

Personally, I bought sweets at the Bakery, which was located at the beginning of Kazakov Street - on the corner with Chkalova Street. It was an old bakery that celebrated 50 years of its existence in the early 70s. In addition to sweets, I bought there no less my beloved kos-halva for 19 kopecks (100 grams) and mint gingerbread cookies in the form of figures of animals and houses. Today we no longer produce anything like this, but a cafe was made from an old bakery.

But back to the Soviet sweets, about which there was even a saying: "You will eat a lot of sweets, the priest will stick together." The most accessible of the candies, as already mentioned, were caramels, candies and toffee. The very first Soviet caramels appeared in the 1920s - for example, the Ilyich caramel with a portrait of V. I. Lenin on the wrapper. At the same time, other caramels were popular: "Krestyanskaya", "Sever", "Barberry" and even "Stenka Razin", which were produced by the Babaevskaya factory.

In our years (60s-70s) the most popular caramels were "Crow's Feet", "Crayfish Tails" (both with coffee fillings), sour "Snowball", milk toffee "Korovka". True, the latter was expensive for constant use - 2 rubles 50 kopecks per kilogram, since it was made from whole condensed milk and butter.

Much more affordable were Duchess caramel, the same Barberry, Petushki on a stick (5 kopecks apiece), as well as Kis-kis and Golden Key toffee, which were also cheap - 5–7 kopecks for 100 grams. Unlike caramel "Montpensier" in a metal box - those were in short supply. Like other caramel - "Vzletnaya", which almost did not go on sale and was distributed to passengers who made air flights in order to relieve their nausea attacks.

Among the expensive sweets - "Kara-kum" and "Belochka" (chocolate, with grated nuts inside), "Bird's milk" (tender soufflé in chocolate), "Grillage", "Songs of Koltsov", "To the stars". The latter could be sold both by weight and in boxes - 25 rubles per box.

What other candies were there: "Arctic", "Toys" (caramel), "Caravan", "Strawberry with cream", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Come on, take away", "Night", "Snowball" (caramel), Terem-Teremok, Southern Liqueur (caramel), Zoological, School, Zolotaya Niva, Milk Bar, Pineapple.

There was a lot of chocolate, but the most famous was, of course, "Alenka" (1 ruble 10 kopecks for a large bar and 20 kopecks for a small one - 15 grams).

In addition to "Alenka", in the USSR there were other names of chocolate: "Road" (1 ruble 10 kopecks), "Merry guys" (25 kopecks), "Slava" (porous), "Firebird", "Teatralny", " Circus "," Lux "," Pushkin's Tales "and others.

Let's look at the Internet again.

Masha Ivanova: “In the USSR, chocolate had a taste of a deficit. More often it was bought not in order to eat, but in order to give. In the USSR, only pilots and polar explorers could devour a chocolate delicacy without a twinge of conscience. They were given a high-calorie product "according to the charter." Well, the schoolchildren also got it. In Soviet times, children were given a small tile before exams to "recharge their brains."

The sweets were often very tasty, but the decoration was limp. The contrast was even greater. After all, such a luxury was wrapped in a pitiful candy wrapper! .. Confectionery GOSTs strictly followed the recipe. Soviet chocolate was in no way inferior in quality to the same Swiss one. And it was cheaper only because most of the cocoa-supplying countries were among the allies of the USSR. Any interruptions in the supply of the necessary confectionery components were reflected in production.

In the Soviet Union, candy boxes were never thrown away! - they passed from hand to hand, like a victory banner. Under the brand of the box, sweets were bought by weight and neatly laid out in the package. And if it was possible to buy a new one, unopened, it was opened extremely carefully so that, God forbid, it would not be scratched ... "

Lydia: “In the late 60s - early 70s, there were even discounted sweets and caramel, chocolate in stores. The caramel was melted, the chocolate was broken bars (there should be only whole ones), and the candy must have expired (in Soviet times, the shelf life was strictly monitored). When I was still in school in the 60s, my mother would give 1 ruble, send for granulated sugar, so I’ll buy sand for 90 kopecks and Caucasian candies for 10 kopecks - they seemed so delicious (my mother raised us alone, you won’t be fooled). But when I started to work, I have tried all kinds of sweets, I still have a sweet tooth, and my favorite ones are “Swallow” from the Krupskaya factory ... "

Helena: “In our time, in the 60s, pastry shops were filled with all kinds of sweets and sweets. Now this is impossible to imagine. And everything was of excellent quality! Loose bars of dark chocolate, figured. All kinds of kozinaki and nuts in sugar. The cakes were delicious and there were plenty of pastries. And I remember the most interesting sweets were for adults - “Bottles in chocolate with cognac or liqueur”. "Concert sweets" - delight, "Grill in chocolate", "Mokko", "Bears", "Sea stones", "Sweet peas", "Molodist" - these are already caramels. They loved Moskovskaya caramel very much. Chocolates "Kolos", "Stolichnye", "Salut", "Souffle" - different squares. Then marmalade fudge, Baltika marmalade, South Night chocolates, Humpbacked Horse aerated chocolate, Russian Patterns, Charodeyka chocolates, Raspberry, Mandarin, Red Flower, Zoological "," Truffle ", lollipops (leaf), monpasier. And in Detsky Mir, my parents bought me ... a chocolate phone. And how many curly chocolates there were in the foil! There were also chocolate medals, and simple small chocolates of 20 kopecks ... "

Larissa: “How often I remember those moments when, on the eve of the New Year, my mother and I went to the best confectionery in Kharkov“ Vedmedik ”and, having stood in line at several counters at once, we, happy, carried home chocolates! And what a pleasure it was to string them by the tails on a string to decorate the Christmas tree later. These were sacred candies, I did not touch them until the moment of decoration. I remember the beautiful labels of sweets "Marusya Boguslavka", "Merry little men", "Come on, take it away!" I folded wrappers between the pages of books and they kept the unique aroma of the holiday for a long time. Where are they now, these books? And why did my children never collect candy wrappers? Something is wrong with our children ... "

Hope: “Nobody remembers the little briquettes of pressed cocoa with sugar? Sold in the 60s. They had to be dissolved in boiling water and drunk like cocoa. But we ate these cubes and I don't remember anything tastier, despite the presence of other sweets. And from childhood - there was a soy "Children's" chocolate. A girl is drawn on the cover. And inside there is an insert with clothes for her. Both the doll and the clothes had to be cut out. Nobody will remember ??? My children do not believe me ... "

nt61: “Pressed cocoa? Oh, I remember this treat. Pressed cocoa with sugar, there was still milk (dry, of course). And all this joy cost about 7-8 kopecks. And there was also coffee in the same performance for 10 (11) kopecks ... Raspberry sweets. If we are talking about fondants, very soft and fragrant (raspberry, lemon) in the form of cones, then these were the simplest sweets at that time, but they were also very tasty. And I loved to eat them, or rather to gnaw already "outdated". That's it, the saliva has gone ... "

echidna56 (Orenburg): “After the lessons everything was delicious - from a round bun for three kopecks to curabie cookies bought in a fold - if you rehearse or hang around in a mug, they would throw off how much they had and buy, depending on the amount, two or three cookies per nose ... We, sweet tooth, were attracted by "tent number 7" - a kiosk from the restaurant "Orenburg" with the freshest cakes - there are 22 kopecks, choose what you want ... If less - shortbread or buns. Special memories are associated with juices - they were sold in the school cafeteria for 8-9 kopecks a glass, thick, 1000% natural juices with pulp - plum, peach, pear, apple ...

I also remembered homemade truffles - from the packs of baby food already mentioned here. The recipe is hopelessly lost ...

On a bad day, one could have enjoyed the Artek waffles. But what could be there - it happened, and the chocolate from "ovnilin" was eaten - it was called a sweet bar. It was best to go to the store with my grandfather - he always bought normal food - at least a muffin with raisins in the grocery store was not displayed, corn sticks were rare and in a fight - one pack in hand (!), Ice cream - at worst, in best of times - chocolate bar - 1.80, each one. From "karakumoks" and "cockerels", we stuck a match into them and made an Eskimo (only a dwarf one) - we didn't have it in our city, but there was a book about Aibolit! ..

We also had our own branded biscuits in the city - "Orenburgskoe" - bent with horseshoes. My other grandfather bought it in kilograms and sent it to Astrakhan, to the Kirov fish factory, with parcels to his parents. Very tasty - you can gnaw, you can dip in milk tea ... "

Coca Ch.: As a child, I ate "Stolichny" sweets once in a single copy; more often came Sputnik sweets - a form like Truffle, but a little more, also with liqueur. There were also candies of this form "Aleko", "Seagull Cosmic", "Zolota Niva", "Truffle". The latter were the most expensive, costing something about 7 rubles before the rise in price. 20 kopecks Truffles were often the only chocolates that lay freely in the grocery store, because, firstly, they were very expensive, secondly, hard (they could only be gnawed), thirdly, they were sprinkled with cocoa, that is. were bitter. In the early 70s, Zolota Niva sweets appeared, they cost a little cheaper, about 6 rubles, and were softer and sprinkled with waffle crumbs. By the way, "Aleko" and "Seagull Space", by the way, disappeared around the mid-70s.

The middle niche was occupied, as they would say now, by "elite" sweets such as "Red Poppy" and "Karakum" (they had something so crispy inside). The price is about 3.40 - 3.60 rubles.

I also remember such sweets as "White Acacia" - they kept in the assortment for a long time, when there were no others. They cost, it seems, 2 rubles. 80 kopecks

The lowest level was occupied by the "Lemonnaya" and "Osennyaya" sweets with white filling. Price RUB 1 80 kopecks

Sweets "with white filling", perhaps, could be distinguished into a separate class. There were more expensive sweets - Pilot (the candy wrapper is so interesting, a piece of paper with a blue and white stripe, in the middle - foil), Citron (the filling is white and yellow, with lemon flavor, the candy wrapper was wrapped only on one side), Swallow.

Wafer sweets are a separate topic. As already said, there was "Gulliver". The idea itself is original - after all, Gulliver was big in the land of the Lilliputians. The Gulliver candy was just as big. I also remember the Yalynka candy of the same format.

Smaller waffles - "Our Mark", "Clubfoot Bear", "Tuzik", "Spartak", "Pineapple", "Fakel".

"Torch", by the way, was sold in bulk, without wrappers. He held on to the last. When the country ran out of chocolate, they began to make "Torch" from soy chocolate.

"Pivdenna Nich" ("Southern Night"). Filling of some kind of marmalade. Probably the only candies that are exactly the same today as they were 45 years ago.

Caramel. I didn’t remember much - I didn’t like them, although, I remember, I once sat down on the Vzletnaya. I would also like to mention the Cherry caramel. It was very expensive caramel, something about 5 rubles per kilo. It was wrapped in a very beautiful and valuable wrapper of the "celofashka" type of black color, with red cherries. For some reason, I only had to see candy wrappers. The chocolates were so expensive that the parents apparently preferred to buy chocolates for the money.

Butterscotch - "Mu-mu" (square, like "maggi" bouillon cubes), "milk". Nothing special, except for the ripped out of the teeth of the fetus.

"Long sucking" - there were "barberry" and "mint". "Barberry" in the early 70s disappeared, there were only "mint" ones. These are the sweets that could be found in the most remote village, in the run-down silpo, where no other sweets have ever lived. They were wrapped in waxed paper like this. They had small holes along the length (like macaroni, but much smaller in diameter) through which you could try to suck tea from a mug.

"Cockerels on a stick" in the store cost 5 kopecks. There were different "cockerels" - "stars", "bunnies", actually "cockerels" and some other animals of an incomprehensible shape. At the same time, grandmothers walked around the city, who sold boooo-big such cockerels, whole, one might say, roosters, painted with bright colors (probably harmful), self-made, made of burnt sugar. Those cost 20 kopecks.

At the end of the 70s, “Favorite” sweets appeared in Kiev - they were slightly increased in size, not like “Gulliver”, but somewhere in half. They cost, I think, 3.60, were very tasty.

Back in the late 70s, "sweet tiles" appeared. As I understand now - from soybeans. Nowadays, too, sometimes you come across such a "sweet bar", but under the proud name "chocolate".

But all sorts of different "cherries in chocolate", etc., were probably made only in Moldova. From there, it happened, they brought a "bomb" in boxes.

Well, there were also "Assorted". There was also Bird's Milk. It is not clear where they were sold, I have not seen them in stores, but they were given for birthdays.

In Kiev, on the street. Lenin (above the Central Department Store, not reaching the Opera House, on the right side, opposite the Museum of Nature) there was a store called "Solodoshchi Ukrainy". There were always huge queues. There, each confectionery factory had its own department. There were almost never queues for one or two departments. There I hoisted when I had the opportunity. But this is already the end of the 70s - the beginning of the 80s ... "

Lokomotiv (Engels): “It is difficult to list all the tasty things that happened then. Now the choice is great, but I don’t dare to call it tasty! .. I think that everyone remembers chocolate medals for 9 kopecks, monpasier in jars and by weight, Alenka chocolate (not to be confused with the current Alenka, she never stood next to Soviet!). It is hard not to remember Soviet sausages, what we eat now is not sausage. I don't even want to talk about the current sausages from fluffed pork skin. And Soviet champagne, which really was champagne according to Abrau Durso's technology, and not soda, as it is now. Well enough, or I'll burst into tears! :) "

Pauline: “The first sweet miracle from my childhood - gummy bears, were sold in the“ Lakomka ”store next door (both the store and the bears disappeared without a trace long ago). Not the ones that are sold in bags now, of course. Each teddy bear was about eight centimeters long, with beady eyes and a bow on the neck. Dark marmalade covered with sugar. I was always sorry to eat, I already smelled and licked before biting, starting with the ears ...

And in the bakery they sold such biscuit biscuits in boxes, called the "magic stick". These sticks lay in two rows, laid out with paper. The box is pink, with a running girl. Of course, it never occurred to me to read who was producing it. It seemed that everything has always been and will always be. But no ...

And for 20 kopecks from school breakfasts, we bought "Takeoff" candy. Small, ribbed, sour, and there were quite a few of them for this amount.

And for some reason I still remember (in the same bread) small rye bars with raisins for diabetics. Wow, and there was delicious food, especially since they were baked right there, below, like all kinds of buns with nuts, puffs and other baked goods. Can you compare with the current ones? And not because the taste of childhood is always special, but because they did it conscientiously. The store smelled a mile away, better than any advertisement, and if you slow down at the basement window, you could see how these buns are spread on baking trays ... "

ergo67 (Ukraine): “The New Year is getting closer, and from that there are frequent memories of children's New Year's joys and feelings. One of the traditional attributes of the New Year in my childhood (related to sweets) was hung on the tree (in large quantities) amazing-tasting “Frosty tubes” sweets (long ones like pencils, but snow-white), now there are all sorts of “chills”, but that's not it at all. For some reason, few people remember these sweets, but in the 70s in the Donbass there were plenty of them in every grocery store, and by the mid-80s they disappeared, alas ... "

PROBA: "Ice cream in chocolate" Leningradskoe ", caramel" Goose feet "," Crayfish tails "," Pastila ", marshmallow in chocolate, candy" Come on, take away ", Muscat" Stepnaya rose "(a masterpiece of the Novocherkassk research institute), corn crunch sticks. And cocoa "Golden" and "Silver Label" will never be compared with №esquik ... "

Glafira Z.: “But I remember that we had a crush in the school cafeteria for a puff with jam for 7 kopecks))), two buns in one hand! High school students always ate everything first, but we kids got little ... "

As far as I remember, in the buffet of my beloved school No. 325, biscuits for 7 kopecks and a bun "Calorie" with raisins for 8 kopecks were especially popular. I also remember the big slogan stretched out in the buffet: “School breakfasts are great! They will help you quickly - to become strong, courageous, dexterous, as they are useful and very tasty! "

rvr70 (Moscow): "Caramel" Teatralnaya "and" Vzletnaya "(with the Aeroflot emblem on the wrapper), cranberries in sugar - 2 rubles. 50 kopecks for 1 kg. Oatmeal cookies - they are no longer there, as before, in a square long package, inside it is laid in parchment ... "Yuzhny" chill, such a yellow one - but you can't remember everything at once !!! "

By the way, oatmeal cookies were very popular in the USSR. But the most popular brand was considered to be Yubileinoye cookies, which were born even before the revolution - in 1913, when the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanovs was celebrated. It was in honor of this anniversary that confectioner Adolph Siu at his factory “A. Sioux and Co ”released the“ Jubilee ”cookies. And five years later, already under the Bolsheviks, this factory was nationalized and renamed "Bolshevik". However, Yubileinoye continued to be produced according to the same recipe: wheat flour, corn starch, powdered sugar, margarine, milk and eggs.

Bobas: “For many years I have been trying to recall the name of the tasty treat, which I adored as a child: there were such waffles, abundantly sprinkled with nuts and also abundantly poured with chocolate. The production is definitely Bulgaria. They were sold packaged by 1 piece, but the piece was 100 grams, I think. The tutu has a vivid combination of a bright blue background and a scarlet rose. Something I remember that they were called "Marika", but I'm not sure ...

Another "delicious" from childhood: loose dates. At 80 kopecks per kilogram. For some reason, I bought them for myself only when I wandered into the music room. On the way - a grocery store, in it - a sticky cube of these overseas sweets. For 5 kopecks it turned out 8 dates, for 3 kopecks - 5. I came to the music room, rinsed them in the washstand, wrapped them in a "golden grain" of chocolate specially reserved for these cases. By the end of the lesson, they softened, this was my reward for not too favorite music lessons. For some reason, the idea to run to the store and buy them just never came up. It was a children's ritual: home - dates - music. "

Privoljski (Engels): “I remember briquettes with jelly. They gnawed it with pleasure, tasted good, not very sweet, with a berry aroma. But there was no point in making real jelly out of it, it turned out to be tasteless, dirty swill ... "

Mutabor777: “I love sweets! And I remember all the sweets of my childhood ... I also remember these five-kopeck "cockerels-on-a-stick" and toffee "Kis-kis" that were torn off along with the fillings. There were also such long lollipops that looked like a pencil ... Caramel pads with filling, soy bars ... And chocolate ones, of course! These are "Gulliver", and "Golden Pheasant", and "Little Fox-Sister". Chocolates "Alenka", "Chaika", bar "Hello", chocolate bar, round large "Planet" ... Well, and many more: "Kara-Kum", "Sunny Bunny", "Tick-Tac", "Merry little men "... But the most delicious candy for me is" Come on, take it away "(two hares were drawn on the wrapper, taking carrots away from each other). I ate these sweets in my earliest childhood in the mid-70s, then I never met ... Maybe that's why I consider them the most delicious ... "

Latysheva Elena: "Come on, take it away" candy I remember well - only the wrapper was not hares, but a girl holding a candy high, which was attempted by a dog jumping at her feet. And I saw and ate "Flamingo" bars only in Vilnius - they were made in Lithuania. They also forgot about the "poppy seeds" - plates of pressed poppy, cobbled together either with honey or sugar syrup. "

Svetlana: “I lived in a small mining town, and we had a Palyanitsa store in our house, where there was a confectionery department. When I was in the second shift, leaving home, I always went into the store and bought a Golden Key or Kis-Keys for 10-15 kopecks, all this fit in the pocket of a school apron and was enough for several school breaks. Dad often traveled to Kiev for work and brought “Kievsky” cake to all the neighbors, I don’t know how he managed to go shopping there, but he always did his orders. And when I flew on business trips to Moscow, I always brought a bunch of sweets, my mother hid them, before the holidays, my brother and I found and often pulled out one by one, and when the holidays came ... then there were not enough sweets, for this we often got)))) Often, my brother and I argued about who would go to hand over the bottles, because 5 bottles is a ruble, and you could go for a ruble - you could go to the cinema and to an ice cream parlor. In May, summer cafes began to work in the city, and our whole class went there after school, the Letnee cake cost 15 kopecks, and ice cream without syrup cost 20 kopecks, with syrup 22 kopecks. The beauty!!!"

Maria4e: “Even my brother in childhood correctly noticed my mother’s principle:“ If you want sweets to be stored for a long time, take the tasteless ones. ” Oh, how true! Until now, I remember the Soviet gifts, thanks to which Melky and I fulfilled the five-year plan for eating sweets in a couple of days. The size of the plastic bag, of course, did not correlate in any way with the amount of goodies inside. Mom's bosses almost always filled the bag with caramel and three tangerines ... In a good year, "Artek" was still thrown from above.

Delicious and non-tasty sweets were divided in different proportions - happiness, if one in five. That is, for five caramels, there was still a chance to meet a chocolate one. Caramels were not held in high esteem, although they were eaten immediately without much lamentation over them ...

Sweets "Duchess", "Barberry", "Rachki", "Goose Feet" - all of them were the first to go to battle in the name of early childhood caries. And they could only be eaten with a sticky piece of paper.

In the second echelon there were sweets, conventionally christened "white-dark stuffed" - "Swallow", "Romashka", "Burevestnik", "Morskie". As a rule, my brother and I used them as internal currency to pay for all sorts of small orders. Yes, yes, even then the currency chaos was familiar to me. The course of "Petrel" was unstable - sometimes in a single copy he could send his brother on an overnight business trip for a glass of kvass, and sometimes it dropped to the memorable "Barberries" and could not even force him to draw the curtains for the night.

Gold reserves have always been "Little Red Riding Hood", "Bear in the North", "Red Poppy", "Bylina", "Gulliver", "Karakum" and "Pineapple". However, the latter always harbored some prescription unpredictability. It happened to taste such sour "Pineapple" that they instantly passed into the category of caramels on my brother and my domestic stock market. I also had to pay extra for Melky to take them.

Several things could also have come from the “good” gift in the gift: for example, the “Pushkin's Tales” chocolates, even with a white touch of antiquity, went into the air. Daddy could have a snack with them not only tea and coffee, but also rice porridge, white bread, and, in fact, even gingerbread ... "

Ludmila: “Oh, sweet notes of childhood ... Everyone has just an abyss of sweet memories. I would like to remember the curly marmalade. Such big bears, bunnies, Dunno in sugar ... Nothing special about the taste, but nibble a little bit, then dissolve delicious gummies in your mouth ... They stretched the pleasure. Another gray (sunflower) halva ... Small squares of milk chocolates 11 kopecks each: "Pushkin's Tales", "Krylov's Fables" ... "

Irina: “My grandmother's sister often came to visit us from Moscow and brought me various gifts. I will not forget vanilla sweets - yummy, no words! I have not seen these sweets anywhere else, and in Ukraine, at least in Sumy, they were not sold. "

Tatiana: “I want to clarify a little. All the cakes cost 22 kopecks, simple chocolates like Swallows - 3.50, and Kara-kum, Belochka - 5.50, and Alenka chocolate was the cheapest - 80 kopecks per 100-gram bar, because it was dairy ... There was also the same - "The Seagull". With affection I look at the candy wrappers of those old sweets, all the girls (including myself) collected candy wrappers, some in a box of sugar, some from under sweets. Everything was laid out according to the format and quality of the wrapper, it was a pleasure to sit somewhere with your girlfriends, sort out your treasures, exchange takes and show off new products. I remember when we were given money to go to school for lunch, we saved and, going into a pastry shop, bought one candy at a time (5-6 kopecks) just for the sake of a new candy wrapper! .. "

Lala zimova: “During the years of my childhood, there was a certain set of sweets, cakes, ice cream, cookies that we all loved, remembering which we feel a lingering feeling of nostalgia, because they are no longer produced. I remember such cacao pillows with jam inside were popular and they cost ridiculous money, either 75 or 80 kopecks per kilogram ...

Some sweets did not just lie on the shelves of Kiev stores, they had to be caught and at the same time still stand in line. But many famous and beloved brands of Soviet sweets, such as Zolotaya Niva, Rakovye Shaki, Barberry, Duchess, Zolotoy Klyuchik, Karakum, Belochka, Mishka Kosolapy, Pineapple "," Milk bar "," School ", candies in boxes" Assorted "and colorful candies in large metal boxes" Monpassier "were available to everyone who wanted to enjoy themselves and cost ridiculous money in our times. I would also like to note the world of chocolates and everyone's favorite "Alenka", "Chaika", dark chocolate "Gvardeisky". The famous caramel in chocolate, Snezhok sweets, Honey caramel, raisins and nuts in chocolate in bright packaging bags, pastille and a wide variety of chocolates - Extra, Nut, Teatralny, Inspiration were often brought from Moscow. famous confectionery factories "RotFront", "Red October" and "Babaevskaya".

Many children also loved sweets such as "Korovka" with boiled condensed milk inside, but they were in short supply, and these cherished little boxes could only be found in the grocery store in the morning, and, of course, they were quickly sorted out. By the way, these sweets have successfully survived to our children, as well as the famous and no less scarce and everyone's favorite sweets "Bird's Milk" and "Grillage".

A special place among the favorite delicacies of Soviet children was occupied by marshmallows! Marshmallow white, pink and chocolate. In Kiev, of course, it was possible to search for marshmallows in chocolate during the day with fire, but white and pink were in short supply, and marshmallows in chocolate were usually brought from Moscow. Lemon slices were also in short supply, they were rarely found in Soviet stores, they were obtained by pull, as well as Strela chocolates. The world of cookies was also diverse. I remember the delicious Mosaic cookies, they were of two colors - light and chocolate and were sold in a box. Everyone's favorite waffles "Artek" and, of course, sweet and crunchy "Straws", everyone's favorite "Chocolate Sausage" ...

But in the New Year's gift, the most delicious was a chocolate bunny for 1 ruble !!! And the same chocolate Santa Claus! They appeared together, both the hare and Santa Claus, about two weeks before the New Year. I was always happy with them. But you must admit that in our Soviet childhood we did not experience a lack of sweets, of which there were a great many! .. "

Olga: “In a New Year's gift I was looking for forbidden tangerines, dragees in chocolate and white glaze. My brother and I studied the contents of the gift and honestly divided it in half. The candy wrappers have been kept for more than one year. "

Natalia: “I remember in 1980 I got to the Christmas tree in the Kremlin, There was a“ Chill ”in the present, but not a simple one, but a lemon one. God, what a deliciousness ... "

Moviegirl: "The Volga relatives brought Kuibyshevskie sweets, for them I was ready to go to the store at least 100 times or take out the garbage for a week without a queue ..."

Krad: "Candy" Zolotaya Niva ". Now there are similar sweets, but the taste is still unattainable ... "

Alexey: “There were very tasty Pionerskie sweets, such stripes in black and white, then Shkolnye sweets, they just melted in their mouths, a candy wrapper is bright green with yellow stars, these are the early 80s, then they were no longer sold. Morskie sweets, Kalev factories, Privet soy tiles for 20 kopecks, I could eat 5 pieces at once ... "

And I: “When I was five years old, I tried the Tuzik candy. The taste is breathtaking. It was almost impossible to get them, and there was always no money for such a luxury. And in adulthood, they did not impress ... "

Ira: "The most delicious sweets of the 70s -" Belochka "from the factory. N.K.Krupskaya and Truffles. These were also the most expensive sweets (at least in the North-West of the USSR). They cost 7 rubles. 50 kopecks per kilogram ".

Antokha: “In principle, each region had its own peculiarities, and in Ulyanovsk we also had a not sickly“ confectionery ”. And all the sweets were awesome! My favorites are Squirrel, Kara-kum, Little Red Riding Hood and Bears. Well, and in boxes. And also tiles and bars ... "

I also have a childhood memory about "regional" sweets. As I have already mentioned, every summer our whole family traveled to my father's homeland - to Uzbekistan. They lived in a large village in the Bukhara region (near the ancient city of Gijduvan). So there I tried real eastern halva, which was cooked by one local pastry chef grandfather (it was not on sale). My grandfather sold it at a price of 1 ruble for a large bowl (in liquid form) and I periodically ran to him, begging for money from my father. The taste is unforgettable, especially when it is just cooked, hot (when it cooled down, it lost a little in taste).

tichkank999: “We in Gorky had our own, no less well-known Moscow confectionery factory - Sormovskaya. I remember, "Little squirrel" with the addition of nuts, "Teddy bear" with a waffle inside, "Cockerel", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Golden Khokhloma". Mostly they came across to me in gifts for the New Year. That was a holiday !!! "

sasha: "I remember that my mother brought Pheasant chocolates from somewhere - I have never seen anything like it now ..."

Irina: “I agree with everyone, although I am ten years older than you. 70-80 kopecks, with my mother's salary of 92 rubles a month, was a very good sum then. Here in Leningrad, "Solomka" was very popular and it cost quite cheap. It's funny, but I buy the same "Straws" in my New York, and in the same packaging. Our compatriots are very entrepreneurial! I have the most delicious memories of soy bars, and it is soy, not chocolate. Apparently, there was not enough money for chocolate, but I adored them. They knitted their mouths and weren't sugary. Even in Leningrad, on Nevsky, there was a cafe "Sever" or "Roskond", so there were sold various pastries, cakes, sweets and all kinds of outlandish confectionery - one Kiev cake was worth what! And also cakes "Tube" and baskets with roses from butter cream ... I have not eaten this here yet ... "

Anatoly: “The sweets of my childhood are“ Belochka ”and“ Baltika ”,“ Truffle ”and“ Red Poppy ”produced by the“ Laima ”factory, as well as PASTILAAAAA and ZEFIR, which you cannot buy now, but caramels“ Monpassier ”in a tin can for 20 kopecks ... "

Anna: “For some reason I remembered the Snowball caramels, although I didn't particularly like them, my parents often bought them. And chocolates "Lake Ritsa". They had a white and sour filling with a chocolate icing on top. So, my brother and sister and I ate the icing, and sculpted all sorts of figurines from the filling ... I can't imagine how I would take it if I caught my child now doing a similar activity ... There was also a delicious "Calorie" cookie with a picture of a funny bear on the package ... Now I would love to try it all! But this, of course, can no longer be found ... "

Helena: “On New Year's Eve, to the ballet“ Swan Lake ”, to the timeless“ Irony ... ”, an action I especially loved took place: all the New Year's gifts were shaken out on the velvet smooth surface of the sofa! A happy moment of owning mountains of all kinds of sweets, tangerines from the unknown "Morocco", chocolate bars and medals! Do you remember the medals in gold? Iris "Kis-Kis"? Tiny chocolates "Pushkin's Tales"? Sports bars? All these delights then hung on a thorny tree that smelled of forest silence and were quietly eaten in the evening, so that when the tree was undressed, only inedible glittering glass remained on it. Well, okay, until another holiday! As for sweets, on weekdays we gnawed on "Dunkin's Joy" or bought a bag of toffee "Golden Key", and we didn't have to count on anything else. What an overseas wondrousness the sweets sent to my neighbor from the Baltic region seemed to me! .. "

Irina-2: “We always had medals in New Year's gifts - large and small with a New Year theme. And the most delicious sweets for me were "Autumn Waltz" and "Evening Bells" from the Rot Front factory - 10 rubles per kg. And in the seventies, "Inspiration" chocolates appeared - with small ten chocolate bars packed in foil. They are still there with the postscript "classic". The taste has not changed !!! So you can travel back to the USSR ... "

Natochka: “For me, the most delicious were the Teatralnye candy wrappers in red candy wrappers with golden patterns. And also caramel "Cheburashka" and "Rakovye necks".

Sergey: "Bear in the North", "Tuzik", "Enchantress", "Funny Men", "Pillows" in sugar and cocoa ... And "Gulliver", "Kara-Kum", "Red Poppy", "Romashka" now…"

Viktor: "Even if the names are the same, the taste of the sweets has changed beyond recognition ..."

Gennadiy: "Bird's milk" is really not the same as it was in the USSR. And "Squirrel" is also not like that, and "Camomile". But marmalade and roasted nuts are similar to Soviet ones. Oh, and there were also "pillows" and "Tuzik" and "Tick-tock" ... "

annamarta: “I remember the boom that was around the Bird's Milk cakes in the early 80s, when there were only 2 shops in all of Moscow that produced these cakes - and one of them was not far from our house. Smells so delicious around the area that it was breathtaking! .. "

By the way, sweets like "Bird's Milk" (with a marshmallow filling) were first produced in Poland in 1936 according to approximately the same recipe as marshmallows, only without adding eggs. The “Bird's Milk” was made by the Warsaw confectionery factory E. Wedel. And in the USSR, these sweets began to be produced in 1968 at the Moscow factory "Krasny Oktyabr" in small batches. They got their name thanks to the legend about the miraculous milk of birds of paradise, which can endow a person with heroic strength, good health and eternal youth. These sweets were produced in many cities of the USSR, and the most delicious ones were made in Moscow and Tomsk. They were so popular that on their basis the cake of the same name was later born. However, cakes and pastries should be discussed separately.

Montpensier in a round tin can with a bizarre pattern on the lid, cockerels on sticks, coloring their tongue, and, of course, the queen of all butterscotch - Milk Cows.

As far as I remember, the most accessible and cheapest in those days was the so-called dragee. Multi-colored round sweets of several types. For 1 ruble 10 kopecks, you could buy a whole kilogram of multi-colored dragees called "peas". The alternative was plain strawberry or cherry. It was delicious, but it was necessary to take into account the freshness of the product, because ... At one time, in the late 80s in the glorious city of Chita, pills were sold, which could be classified as weapons of mass destruction by the Hague Convention, since in order to dissolve them in the mouth , you had to have salivation from the Alien, jaw from the Critter and patience from the Little Buddha)

Peas
A slightly more expensive variety of "peas" was a large dragee with a softer shell and sugar on it. I personally remember, for some reason, lemon. When they were fresh, it was a very tasty thing. They cost more - somewhere in the region of 1 ruble 30 kopecks - 1 ruble 40 kopecks.

Dragee "lemon"
Well, the most expensive and desirable were either peanut dragees - the domestic version of M&M s, or the so-called "sea pebbles" - glazed raisins. I loved the latter very much :-) They cost about 1 ruble 70 kopecks per kilo.

"Sea pebbles"
The so-called pillows were an alternative to dragees for cheapness and goodies. There was a variety of jams under the caramel shell. Tasty, by the way. And they were inexpensive - somewhere around 1 ruble 30 kopecks. After the adoption of the "semi-dry law", they instantly disappeared from store shelves, and became an acute shortage. The reason for the post - cheapness and quality allowed them to become a bestseller of raw materials for the production of moonshine. And since everyone started to "drive" them, it became problematic to find them for food.

"Cool" pads
Eighty ruble - this was the lowest limit, the purchase of a kilogram of numerous caramels, which, perhaps, were the most common type of sweets in the USSR. Not all of them were to my taste. I liked the ones with delicious jam under the caramel shell. "Strawberry with Cream" or "Plum", for example. But some "Cancer necks", "Baltika" or "Snowball" did not cause any emotions in me. And I also remember the Cherry caramel, which cost some exorbitant money (either 4 or 5 rubles per kilo), but it was delicious.

Plum caramel wrapper
Although my favorite variety in this segment has always been (and probably is) caramels called "Lemon". True, they almost played a fatal role in my life. I have a big sweet tooth since childhood, and I became addicted, going to bed, to take out a couple of sweets with me, throwing them under the pillow and savoring their taste, fall asleep. And then, apparently, fell asleep too early and the candy fell into the wrong throat. In general, I began to choke and if my parents were late for a minute or two, who literally shook my legs upside down, pulled this most unfortunate "lemon" out of me, then I would not write these lines now :-) And nevertheless " lemons "I love to this day, although I gnaw them violently - like all caramels :-) Apparently a defensive reaction :-)

Those same "Lemons"
Well, my favorite among this type of sweets were lollipops, or, more correctly, "lollipop caramel". This cheap, but practical and tasty product, I still use with great pleasure. In Soviet times, the number 1 was "Takeoff", which were not only distributed on board Aeroflot airliners, but were also freely available for sale. Such lollipops cost somewhere between 2.30-2.50. And my love for them was due to several circumstances. Firstly, the wrapper depicted a Tu-154, and from a young age I was drawn to aviation. Secondly, a friend of my grandmother, who constantly regaled me with them, told me that these are real aviation sweets and all pilots love them :-)))) And thirdly, they were really tasty. With sourness. I love those. More than just sweet candies like Duchess.

Modern version of the children's bestseller
However, takeoffs were not always in the store, but almost everywhere you could buy "Mint" in a blue wrapper. There was also "barberry" almost everywhere. But unlike modern ones, with sourness, that "barberry" was almost always sweet.

Remember these candy wrappers? :-)

I loved the Start caramel very much. Remember lollipops in the form of washers (well, or large tablets). It was very tasty.
And, of course, a wonderful drink in a round tin can.

Monpasier's box ...
They were miniature, of different colors, shapes and tastes. The only trouble - most often they stuck together and it was necessary to tear off a separate "monpasieshka" with the use of brute physical force. But tasteful :-)) Such a tin was worth somewhere around 20 and was used very actively in the subsidiary farm.

Themselves candy
And we were all probably drawn to buy for 15-20 kopecks of poisonous-colored cockerels on sticks, which were sold by the gypsies in the markets. Parents, of course, did not buy them for us, saying that they were made in unsanitary conditions. But the forbidden fruit is known to be sweet, right? :-))) And there were also sweet sticks - beautiful, but strange in taste

Cockerel from the gypsies ©
And a couple of times from Poland, Hungary and the GDR they brought me real handmade candy caramel, which, in addition to the taste, also looked great. It was fun!

Rarely has there been such beauty
And we will finish today's story with the memory of "toffee" - or fondant mass boiled from condensed milk or molasses. The name was invented for them at the beginning of the 20th century by the French confectioner Morna, who works in St. Petersburg, who for some reason decided that the final product is very similar to iris petals. Why he decided this is difficult to understand.

Kitty Kitty
All toffee can be divided into several subspecies. The most common was the so-called viscous iris, which never was. Representatives of such a subspecies were the Kis-Kis and Tuzik brands. The former were usually steel and the attempt to chew was worth the broken teeth and pulled out fillings, while the latter were too soft and disintegrated on the teeth immediately.

They are the most
More pleasant was the "Golden Key", which can be attributed to a cast semi-solid iris.

Well, it was like that
Well, the queen of toffee was, of course, "Milk Cows" - soft candies with condensed milk inside.
And I also remember that toffee was sold in large pieces by weight. However, they did not enjoy much love ...

Let's talk a little about the favorite sweets of Soviet childhood, in particular, remember the cakes.

Those whose childhood and youth fell on the Soviet era sometimes recall those days with pleasure. Especially sweet tooth and especially when it comes to Soviet pastries. Today we will try to recall the most popular positions in the assortment of Soviet cafeterias and pastry shops.
Delicious assortment

A distinctive feature of the Soviet Union has always been a rather meager assortment of products that were of a fairly high quality. The same can be attributed to Soviet pastries.

It was the cakes that were synonymous with happiness for many children, regardless of age!

Few could pass by the pastry shop. And then there were mittens in cream, textbooks smeared with chocolate, a meringue cake broken into pieces in a new portfolio ...

The current numerous pastry shops and coffee houses delight the eye with the abundance and beauty of culinary products, but they can never be compared with nondescript Soviet pastries made from simple, but high-quality and natural ingredients. Nobody thought about food coloring and preservatives at the time. Depending on the dough from which the cakes were baked, they were subdivided into biscuit, airy, custard, amateur (crumb), almond-nut, sand, sugar rolls, puff.

Unlike today's production, the raw materials for making cakes were premium wheat flour, granulated sugar and powder, starch, molasses, butter, whole and condensed milk, eggs, fruits, fruit fillings, agar, chocolate, cocoa powder, nuts, citric acid, table salt, food colors, vanillin, essences, cognac, wine. Let's remember our childhood joys from the school buffet or our favorite pastry shop.

"Napoleon"

The Napoleon cake was considered a special chic in the culinary-cake environment. It looked like a fat, layered equilateral triangle, covered with delicious cream.

The price is 22 kopecks.

Eclair cake

Eclair with butter cream and chocolate glaze is one of the favorite and delicious pastries of the Soviet era.

The sets of cakes, which were sold in beautiful cardboard boxes, always included an eclair. This cake was made from choux pastry, and creamy or custard cream was used as the filling.

The eclair cost 22 kopecks.

Little basket

A sand basket that was sold everywhere and was no less loved by Soviet boys and girls than the eclair. Most often, the baskets were decorated with cream mushrooms. The mushroom caps were made of dough. These hats were eaten first.

The price is 22 kopecks.

Pastry "Rolls with butter cream"

Delicious and very simple cake. For the generation born in the USSR in the 1960s - 1980s. - puff rolls with a protein cream melting in the mouth were a real delicacy.

The price is 22 kopecks.

Cake Potato

The Kartoshka cake is one of the iconic dishes of Soviet cuisine. The legendary potato is a favorite delicacy of Soviet children. She was loved and loved as well as eclairs, baskets and straws.

It was served in restaurants, student canteens, and at home. Even today, potatoes are a taste of childhood for many ... Which, in general, is not surprising. Not a very laborious dish made it possible to usefully and tastefully dispose of cuttings from cakes, dry biscuits, and crackers.

This cake got the name "potato" because it was trimmed with white cream in the form of sprouts on a potato tuber.

The Potato cake was not baked. And it was made from biscuit crumbs, scraps of cakes, etc., which were mixed with creamy, sweet cream (as an option - condensed milk). Plus - the addition of raisins, nuts - who knows what.

But it should be noted that the real cake "Potato" was always made from biscuit crumbs, and the inside was light in color, that is, without the addition of cocoa.

The price is from 16 to 18 kopecks.

White meringue

A snow-white cake consisting of two halves. Pieces of white crispy meringue were held together with jam or butter cream. The dream of all Soviet girls.

Lemon cakes

One of my favorite sweet treats was lemon tarts with a mild acidity. The indisputable advantage of this sweet treat was the use of the simplest and most affordable products that could be found in any Soviet grocery store.

The price is 22 kopecks.

Sand ring with nuts

An excellent afternoon snack for a Soviet schoolchild or student is a sand ring with nuts. To get the same taste, Soviet chefs used only peanuts! A wavy crust covered with nuts on top could be eaten with tea or milk.

Cookie-ringlet - 8 kopecks.

Jack of all trades

Soviet citizens did not lag behind public catering establishments. Airy eclairs, delicious cakes, pastry potatoes ... What our mothers and grandmothers did not know how to cook! The hostesses preferred to make delicious masterpieces on their own. The recipes were taken from the collection "Cookery". This book was available in almost every home. How to make a cake, bake pies, decorate pastries. In this book, almost all questions were answered.

Young cooks

Mothers had daughters in the wings. Remember the famous "Birthday Days", which were celebrated by the whole class once a month. Especially for these school teas, the girls brought homemade sweets from home.

There were also home economics lessons. The girls also baked cakes on them. At the end of such lessons, we boys came to visit them for tea!

New breath

Much has changed today. Preservatives, improvers, stabilizers, flavors ... and there are no longer those biscuit cakes and pastries, puff tubes and baskets with cream, simple biscuits, juicier, nutty cakes, custard ring with curd cream and much more ... But people's interest in the Soviet culinary "heritage" does not disappear. And we go back to old recipes over and over again.

Favorite goodies

So among the favorite delicacies of our school gatherings was "sweet sausage". It was easy and quick to prepare. Various types of sweet biscuits were used for cooking. There were many recipes for this dish. And here's one of them. The one from the cooking class.

Ingredients (for 8-10 servings):

Cookies "Yubileinoe" (or other) - 750-800 g;

Condensed milk - 1 can (400 g);

Butter - 200 g;

Cocoa powder - 3 tbsp. spoons;

Cognac - 3 tbsp. spoons.

Preparation:

Remove butter and condensed milk from the refrigerator in advance and leave for several hours at room temperature. Break the cookies into small pieces with your hands, mix with condensed milk, then add butter, cocoa and brandy and stir thoroughly. Put a sheet of baking paper or foil on the table and put the prepared mass on the edge in the form of an oblong slide. Wrap it in the form of a long cylinder, smooth it with your hands along the entire length and twist cellophane or foil from the edges (like candy).

Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving and cut into round slices. If desired, you can add half a glass of chopped nuts and 100 grams of chopped prunes to the cookie mass.